Guilt and ambition have to fight it out in every 'Macbeth,' even this thriller by Teller

For the last 412 years, “Macbeth” has been a great bear of a play to produce. I don’t mean because it’s boring (it’s not), or suffering of a deficiency poetical (hardly), or lacking great characters (you’d have to be kidding), or that the language is difficult (it’s perfectly clear when acted well), or even that the action is remote of time or place.

Ha! Shakespeare merely is talking about what goes on inside your own skull. Teenagers get it straight away.

No, it’s the thorny issue of logic. As I sat among some 700 delighted people at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Thursday night — many of whom surely were attracted by the blue-chip name of the masterful Teller and the promise of dark magic and weird stuff bubbling out of the witches’ cauldrons — I found myself being bothered by something in the performance of Ian Merrill Peakes, the very skilled actor in the title role. This production — which is co-directed by Teller and Aaron Posner — had its origins at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 2008. Peakes played the part 10 years ago too.

My issue Thursday night revolved around how Peakes shows us all of the Thane of Cawdor’s soul-shattering guilt and self-doubt in withering technicolor — in fact, the tortured psyche of the title character is especially intense here because the promised illusions in the show mostly are used, most effectively, to dramatize the shadows and demons raging in Macbeth’s subconscious. But Peakes does not as clearly show us the man’s ruthless ambition — actually, let’s call it his murderous ambition, since it takes out a few innocent souls.

As I wrote that down, I remembered that other times I have reviewed this play, I have complained about the precise opposite. It’s possible to play the dude as all ambition, without guilt, without much sense of the personal price he is paying to get what he wants. I now think that there is no real way to reconcile the two. The issue is not Macbeth, it’s “Macbeth.”

The actor just has to make his choices and the critic has to whine. And if you’re playing Macbeth as an older man, as is Peakes, you will lean toward shades of gray, since when we get some tread on our tires, we typically lose the revolutionary certitude of our youth. We feel more for people; we see that absolute victory is rarely the best course; we’re less inclined to kick our opponent to the curb. Most of us.

Same with Lady M. Here you get the luminous presence of Chaon Cross, one of Chicago’s finest classical performers. For most of the play, Teller, Posner and Cross go with the reasonable theory that she is making her husband do it, brokering her intelligence, sexuality and sheer force of nature to function as an evil puppetmaster, less consumed by doubt than her hubby. Cross does all that well. These are dynamic scenes of persuasion.

But then, if you know the play, you will know all about her later remorse, her sleeplessness, her “out damn spot” protestations. In this production, all of that comes totally out of nowhere. But I also know that the scene almost always comes out of nowhere, since it is one of the great 180-degree turns in all of tragic literature. Lady M makes Gertrude of “Hamlet,” who also develops a conscience late in the day, look like the model of consistency.

So maybe I’ve been on a quest to see the unachievable. I should cop to that. Although I found its use of percussive cueing sometimes adding to its remove, “Macbeth” has many strengths.

It is populist, fast-paced, visually exciting, bekilted with an insouciant authenticity, filled with cool illusions, far more humorous than most and, in many sections, it is voraciously intellectual. It’s a terrific introduction to the play for young people. I don’t just refer to the magic; I refer to the vitality of the piece. The twisted sisters (played by McKinley Carter, Theo Germaine and Emily Ann Nichelson) have been thought out very well. Christopher Donohue is moving as Duncan. And, in the role of Banquo, actor Andrew White somehow captures the full panoply of human expression. They are very distinguished exceptions.

For, in general, as thrilling as this production consistently feels, it is invulnerable. Characters describe the loss of everyone they love without really making you feel like their world has been shattered. The psychological torment that roams this earth feels like a cloak designed to conceal the deepest truths. No-one knows themselves enough to make everything make sense.

It’s probably what Shakespeare fully intended. It’s just the play. You can go a lifetime without seeing it unlocked. But I still think there is a prize behind the door.